July 9th and 10th
We spent these two days with Tyler’s parents, Bob and Laura. From giving us all ample padded floor space in separate rooms, to making us banana pancakes, to hosting a belated wedding reception for Adrienne and Tyler, his parents made us feel welcome and let the aches and pains of the road wash away.
Bob and Laura live more than halfway up a mountain in Roseburg, Oregon, and while we were there, we got in a lot of hiking. We scrambled through dead leaves and pine boughs and loose earth, making us all gasp for breath and feel out of shape. Tyler’s sister, Alicia, took Zach and me on a hike up the mountain and under a barbed-wire fence to some open cattleland on top of the ridge. The ridge allowed a sprawling view of the countryside around. Gnarly oaks and Pacific madrone shaped the edge of the woods and provided shelter for a scattered herd of cows. It looked like the Midwest on a grander scale— awesome!
Another walk on the same day took us deep into the forest. Oregon woods are, to me, intensely unsettling. The trees were watchful, tense, unhappy with our presence. The sunlight, golden in fading day, wandered uneasily through the open spaces between the firs, touching on dust motes and tiny insects that flurried through the air like snow. Dry leaves rustled from the trees, searching for the ground. The forest is much older than what I’m used to, and it is very awake.
Golden light turned gray shadow as the sun set, and the forest grew ominous and breathless— no birds sang, no insects buzzed. I must return to these woods someday, to meet them on their own terms, to try to understand them better.
The days in Roseburg are a blur of learning to juggle, of wading in the Umpqua River, of meeting new people, of dancing the Virginia Reel to our warm-up band at the show, of giving and receiving backrubs, and of getting to know my bandmates in a relaxed environment. After our insane drive to the west, it was a nice break.
~Lisa Shafter
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